Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/242

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Jameson
236
Jameson

God had a peculiar view to Scotland, when he says by Isaiah, “I will make an everlasting Covenant with you,” &c.’ In a second edition of this diatribe (Glasgow, 1713) he seems to claim as his ‘A Sample of Jet-black Prelatick Calumny,’ Glasgow, 1713. His last known book was ‘Spicilegia Antiquitatum Ægypti, atque ei vicinarum gentium,’ Glasgow, 1720, a premature attempt to harmonize sacred and profane history.

[Munimenta Universitatis Glasguensis, ed. Cosmo Innes; Prof. W. P. Dickson's Address to the Classes of the Faculty of Theology, Glasg., 1880, p. 11; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Cat. Advoc. Libr. Edinb.; J. P. Lawson's Hist. of the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1688, pp. 185, 214; authorities in text.]

J. T-t.

JAMESON, WILLIAM (1796–1873), botanist, born in Edinburgh on 3 Oct. 1796, was son of William Jameson, a writer to the signet. In 1814 he attended the university classes of Thomas Charles Hope [q. v.] and Robert Jameson [q. v.] in chemistry and natural history, and obtained his diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 1818 he became surgeon on a whaling vessel visiting Baffin's Bay and botanising on Waygat Island (Memoirs of the Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. iii. 416). On his return he, in 1819, attended lectures on mineralogy and made pedestrian visits to Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers. In 1820 he made his second voyage to Baffin's Bay, visiting Duck Island in lat. 74° north, and in the same year he sailed as surgeon for South America. While on the voyage to Lima in 1822, he kept a meteorological journal en route (ib. vi. 203), and, deciding to remain in Peru, practised at Guayaquil until 1826, when he removed to the better climate of Quito. He practised medicine there for a year, and in 1827 became professor of chemistry and botany in the university. In 1832 he was appointed assayer to the mint, and in 1861 director; and in 1864 the Ecuadorean government appointed him to prepare a synopsis of the flora of the country. Of this two volumes and part of a third were printed in 1865, under the title ‘Synopsis Plantarum Quitensium,’ but the work was never completed. While in Ecuador he married, was converted to catholicism, and in recognition of his scientific eminence was created by Queen Isabella a caballero of Spain. In 1869, on his way home to Edinburgh, he visited three sons who had settled in the Argentine Republic. In 1872 he left again for Ecuador, but was seized with fever soon after his return to Quito, and died there on 22 June 1873.

Jameson long corresponded with Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker, Balfour, Lindley, Sir William Jardine, Reichenbach, and Anderson-Henry, and sent home many new species of plants, among which species of anemone, gentian, and the moss Dicranum bear his name. A genus of ferns described by Hooker and Greville is also called Jamesonia. In addition to his papers in the ‘Memoirs of the Wernerian Society,’ the ‘Companion to the Botanical Magazine,’ Hooker's ‘London Journal of Botany,’ the ‘Journals’ of the Linnean and Royal Geographical societies, and the ‘Transactions of the Edinburgh Botanical Society,’ Jameson's only important work is ‘Synopsis Plantarum Quitensium,’ Quito, 1865, 8vo.

[Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, 1873; Royal Soc. Cat. of Scientific Papers.]

G. S. B.

JAMESON, WILLIAM (1815–1882), botanist, born at Leith in 1815, went to the high school at Edinburgh, and then proceeded to study medicine at the university, where his uncle, Robert Jameson [q. v.], occupied the chair of natural history during half a century. Having passed his examinations in 1838, he was appointed to the Bengal medical service, and on his arrival at Calcutta he was temporarily installed as curator of the museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. After serving at Cawnpore, in 1842 he was appointed superintendent of the Saharunpore garden, in succession to Dr. Hugh Falconer. He energetically advocated the cultivation of tea in British India, and under the patronage of the governor-general, Lord Dalhousie, he succeeded in procuring plants and distributing them in various parts of India. To his services the subsequent development of Indian tea-planting was largely due. He retired on 31 Dec. 1875, and came home, where he died 18 March 1882.

[Proc. Linn. Soc. 1882–3, p. 42; Proc. Bot. Soc. Edinb. xiv. (1882) 288–95.]

B. D. J.

JAMESONE, GEORGE (1588?–1644), portrait-painter, born at Aberdeen, probably in 1588 (Bulloch, George Jamesone, p. 32), was second son of Andrew Jamesone, master mason, and his wife Marjory, daughter of Gilbert Anderson, merchant, one of the magistrates of the city. After having practised as a portrait-painter in Scotland, he, according to a generally accepted tradition, which derives some corroborative evidence from the style of his painting, studied under Rubens in Antwerp, and was a fellow-pupil of Vandyck. Probably the pictures of the ‘Sibyls’ and the ‘Evangelists’ in King's College, Aberdeen, are copies from continental originals which he executed at this period. He is stated by Kennedy to have returned to Scot-